Democrats' majority in Broward has increased

Broward County, long the most Democratic bastion in Florida, has become dramatically bluer since the last presidential election.

The number of Broward Republicans has plunged 13 percent since 2004. Not only are they outnumbered 2 to 1 by Democrats, but if the trend continues they could be surpassed by unaffiliated voters by the next presidential election.

A Sun Sentinel analysis of voter registration data for the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections shows bad news for Republicans throughout the county. Their fortunes declined in all but one of Broward's 31 cities.

Even in Parkland, the one place Republican numbers were up, Democrats gained three times the number of new voters.

"Our county is changing," said Chip LaMarca, a Lighthouse Point commissioner who became chairman of the Broward Republican Party about 20 months ago.

Charles Zelden, a history and legal studies professor who specializes in politics and voting at Nova Southeastern University, was more direct: "The Republicans are in trouble."

Broward Democratic Chairman Mitch Ceasar hailed the "downward spiral" of Republican registrations as good news for his party. But even though the numbers are bad for Republicans, they don't mean Democrats should be popping open the champagne.

Registration in a party doesn't mean a person will vote for its candidates. Despite what Democrats tout as a surge of interest in registration and voting by black and young voters because of Barack Obama's candidacy, the Democrats' overall increase in Broward during the last four years is an anemic 2 percent.

And the number of Democratic registered voters declined in one-third of Broward's cities.

Ceasar said it's still positive for the party, which he has led since 1996.

"Our growth may be non-meteoric, but it's still growing in the face of changing demographics, while Republicans are shedding voters," he said.

LaMarca thinks national forces are turning Broward less red and more blue. Red has been shorthand for Republicans and blue for Democrats since television networks used color-coded maps to show states won by George W. Bush and Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election.

LaMarca, Ceasar and political scientist Lance deHaven-Smith of Florida State University all used the same political shorthand to describe the national phenomenon that's hurting the Republican Party: bad "brand name."

"Things have changed in Florida and the United States in the last four years," deHaven-Smith said.

Consider one measure: President Bush's popularity is in the cellar. Just 27 percent of Floridians approved of his performance in a Quinnipiac Poll released last week, while 68 percent disapproved.

Other factors affecting both parties, analysts said, include Broward's population dip, shown in the 3 percent decline in the overall number of registered voters to slightly more than 1 million. Within that decline of 32,245 registered voters, Republicans went down 36,721 and independents slipped 3,593. Democrats picked up 8,069.

"We lost people in Broward County. People are shifting farther north," Zelden said.

As people leave, many of the replacements are part-time residents who maintain voter registrations in other states, may not have U.S. citizenship, or are younger and more likely to come from minority groups than the people they're replacing, analysts said. Younger and minority voters don't register in the same strength as older people, deHaven-Smith said.

"It may be that the traditionally upper-class white voter in Broward is younger and more likely to vote Democratic."

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